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A heartbroken Australian woman has sworn never to use a dating app again after her match scammed her out of AUD$160,000 ($169,000).
Cheryl*, from Perth, had previously been in an emotionally abusive relationship and was looking for love but hadn’t had much luck on Bumble or Tinder.
The 30-year-old womanhad just signed up to Hinge and had only been on the app for two days when a man called Jackson, who “looked good in pictures”, struck up a conversation with her.
From there, the two started an online relationship which included sharing intimate photos with each other, although Jackson would always have various excuses for why they couldn’t meet in real life.
After several weeks Jackson was then able to convince Cheryl to invest in a cryptocurrency share platform which turned out to be fake.
Cheryl told news.com.au she lives “in shame and embarrassment” because she fell for the fraudulent scheme, especially as she works as a professional accountant.
Jackson popped up to Cheryl and they began an online relationship.
The situation is even more difficult for her because some of the money she lost wasn’t hers to spend. Her grandparents had lent her AUD$100,000 to offset her mortgage, but she poured it into the cryptocurrency platform.
Cheryl said when she looks back at her fake relationship, there were a number of “red flags”.
Jackson supposedly lived in the Perth suburb of Bassendean but said he came from China. His English “wasn’t the best”, according to Cheryl.
Now she believes he never lived in Perth and that the cyber criminal was operating from overseas the whole time.
She also thinks she was catfished, as every photo the scammer sent her – including intimate ones and pictures of cafes – never had Jackson’s face in it.
Only one photo contained an additional picture of ‘Jackson’, which was him in a bathtub, but she believes that easily could have been found online along with the other ones used to create the fake profile.
Jackson also claimed he worked for Metricon Homes, but later, upon researching, she realised they don’t have a Perth office.
The biggest alarm bell rang for Cheryl when she was swiping on the Hinge app and saw a profile of another man, who had the exact same answers as Jackson.
“I confronted him about it, I was like ‘what the f***’” but Jackson “was very convincing” and she ultimately decided to let it go.
Straight away the scammer suggested they chat off the Hinge app and they moved to WhatsApp.
“It was kind of fast,” Cheryl admitted. “We spent every night texting each other and I developed romantic feelings for him quite fast.”
After a few weeks of back and forth between the two, with Cheryl excited about the budding romance, Jackson sprung the scam on her.
“That way I could trade bigger amounts and start earning more profit.”
Within a couple of weeks, the website advertised to her that they were offering a “recharge bonus”, where if you deposited a certain amount of funds, the platform would transfer AUD$3000 worth of cryptocurrency into your account.
This prompted her to put in an additional AUD$26,000.
“Normally I wouldn’t do this, but he (Jackson) egged me on. I felt like I could trust him completely,” Cheryl said.
They then offered a couple recharge, where if you donated AUD$50,000 each, the company would give you a AUD$10,000 bonus.
Jackson sent Cheryl a screenshot of him putting in the AUD$50,000. She then followed suit.
However, then the whole scheme came crashing down.
Seeing her investments ticking along nicely, Cheryl tried to withdraw some of her cash – but then an error message appeared on the site.
The account was then frozen due to “suspicious activity” and Cheryl was informed she would need 50 per cent of her balance – which was around AUD$50,000 – to unlock it.
If she didn’t deposit the cash within seven days, the account would be closed permanently, it said.
“I had my stock portfolio of $60,000, I liquidated my entire stock portfolio,” she recalled. “It was two years’ worth of stocks.”
But the investing platform still wouldn’t release her account, demanding another 20 per cent.
She asked Jackson if he would front the money and he made an excuse that he was being investigated by the ATO and couldn’t possibly give her any cash.
By this point she realised it had all been a scam, especially after filling in friends about what had happened.
“I ended up blocking him on WhatsApp, I deleted him from my Hinge account, I’ll never use Hinge ever again.”
She lost a significant amount to the scammer. Photo / 123RF
Cheryl made a complaint to Hinge and they swiftly deleted both scam accounts from the platform which she had flagged with them.
In a statement, a Hinge spokesperson said they take fraud “very seriously” on their platform and that they use AI and content moderators to delete fake accounts.
“As daters look for a meaningful connection, we continue to invest in new updates and technologies to keep them safe,” they said.
